Se­nate wants PS Muraguri to re­sign over Sh5bn saga

File of com­pany that re­ceived Sh200 mil­lion goes miss­ing

The Se­nate Health Com­mit­tee has told Health PS Nicholas Muraguri to re­sign over the unaccounted for Sh5 bil­lion.

It has been re­ported the amount was stolen by the min­istry’s of­fi­cials through ma­nip­u­la­tion of the In­te­grated Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tem and dou­ble pay­ments.

The file of Es­tama In­vest­ment Ltd, said to have re­ceived Sh200 mil­lion, has gone miss­ing at the Reg­is­trar of Com­pa­nies in She­ria House.

Muraguri and Health CS Cleopa Mailu snubbed a meet­ing with the com­mit­tee, in which they were to shed light on the al­leged mega scan­dal said to be five times that of the Sh791 mil­lion NYS theft.

Yes­ter­day the CS and the PS said they will ap­pear next Tues­day, be­cause the in­vi­ta­tion came late on Wed­nes­day.

The com­mit­tee chaired by Mig­ori Senator Wil­fred Machage asked the Ethics and Anti-Cor­rup­tion Com­mis­sion and the Direc­torate of Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion to in­ves­ti­gate the al­leged theft. “We will not sit down and watch as peo­ple swin­dle pub­lic funds. Some­thing must be done. Seize prop­erty owned by the ac­cused to re­cover pub­lic funds,” the senator said.

Machage said the au­dit could take up to three years and that the funds unaccounted for could have been spent by then. “It is un­for­tu­nate that what we are do­ing is a post­mortem but this theft has to be caught by the neck,” he said.

Wa­jir Senator Ab­dul­la­man Ali said the scan­dal is weighty and re­quires swift in­ter­ven­tion to save pub­lic funds. “When the Tharaka Nithi Deputy Gov­er­nor [Eliud Mure­i­thi] had Sh3.5 mil­lion snatched by a body­guard, we saw po­lice swing into ac­tion and re­cover some money,” he said. “We want the same on Muraguri and his ac­com­plices. Kenyans must be told the truth.”